Task Force Members
- Mark Cohen, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, Co-chair
- Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell, College of Applied Health Sciences, Co-chair
- Rashid Bashir, Grainger College of Engineering
- Barry Benson, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement
- Germán Bollero, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
- Peter Constable, College of Veterinary Medicine
- Brooke Elliott, Gies College of Business
- Patty Jones, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation
- Venetria Patton, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Julie Pryde, Champaign Public Health District
- Gene Robinson, Carl E. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
Charge Letter
Dear Colleagues,
The Boldly Illinois Transformational Health Innovation (BILT-HI) Task Force, co-chaired by Mark Cohen, Dean of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, and Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell, Dean of the College of Applied Health Sciences, is charged with defining the infrastructural capabilities and needs for the campus around health innovation and education as well as the operational plan and resourcing needed to transform Champaign-Urbana and the campus into a national and global leader in this space over the next 10 years.
The BILT-HI task force will first create a comprehensive database of current infrastructure, faculty, resources, and programs on campus related to health innovation across colleges, interdisciplinary units, and existing partnerships. This database will serve as a framework that the task force will use to create an operational strategy that defines and outlines opportunities and gaps for growth, new programming, and new infrastructure for implementation. The task force will then align these opportunities into operational plans associated with resources (both existing resources and new resources associated through a dedicated BILT-HI campus fundraising campaign) as an implementable framework for the campus in this area for the next 3, 5, and 10 years.
The implementation strategy recommended by the task force should highlight the uniqueness of health innovation on campus that will take us to the next level by 2030 and beyond as a national and global leader. Operational plans for implementation should align the strategic growth of colleges and interdisciplinary units with significant activity in the health domain and growth opportunities through our community, health care, and industry partners, as well as with donors and our state government.
The task force will consider five domains of focus for operationalizing the BILT-HI implementation strategy:
- People: Faculty recruiting for campus; students for new programs, pathway programs, online and global engagement; Staffing and infrastructure for programs
- Funding: Salary + tenure lines, recruitment packages and startup funding, programmatic equipment, wetlab customization, student scholarships, health-focused professorships (across several colleges and schools) new centers and programming (All part of a unified major BILT-HI fundraising campaign for campus)
- Space and Infrastructure: Consideration around a new Health and Medical Innovation and Education Complex with Health Innovation Research Building (i.e. the campus may need another 300,000 to 400,000 square feet of translational research space for campus to compete as a top 20 institution nationally in extramural health-focused research funding – NIH/NSF/DOD, etc.) as well as additional infrastructure in several colleges to support this effort.
- Connections: Hospitals, state, community, and public health partners; national and international partnerships and consortia; corporate partnerships; government agencies (FDA, Medicare, Medicaid, NIH, NSF, DOD)
- Growing Programs and Collaborations: Developing new or existing multi-unit centers and programming that truly moves research and technology out of the campus and into the community to scale statewide, nationally, or globally. Some examples of new and existing center programs that will grow health innovation for the campus may include: the Center for Translational Oncology and Regenerative Medicine (partnerships with CCIL, GCOE, LAS, IGB, BI, CIMED, and others); the Center for Global Health Innovation (houses Global Consortium of Innovation and Engineering in Medicine, with partnership opportunities with CIMED, GCOE, ACES, LAS, AHS, Gies, etc.); the Center for Medical Extended Reality and Health Simulation and the IMMERSE Center; the Center for Medical Innovation and Entrepreneurship; the Center for Health Access and Rural Medicine; the Center for Women’s and Reproductive Health; the Center on Health, Aging, and Disability, and collaborative units on campus with health-related efforts including the IGB, IHSI, Beckman Institute, Siebel Center for Design, the Center for Social and Behavioral Science, and many others.
The task force will plan to have monthly meetings starting in April 2024, with the goal of providing an operational strategy and plan to campus leadership by January 2025.
Sincerely,
Robert J. Jones
Chancellor
John Coleman
Provost
Executive Summary
In 2024, the Boldly Illinois Transformational Health Innovation (BILT-HI) Task Force was charged by Chancellor Robert Jones and Provost John Coleman to advance a coordinated, campus-wide strategy for health innovation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The task force was asked to identify and align existing infrastructure, faculty expertise, resources, programs, and partnerships related to health innovation across colleges, interdisciplinary units, and existing collaborations. This work is intended to inform a long-term operational strategy that identifies opportunities and gaps, supports new programming and infrastructure, and aligns both existing and new resources—including those supported through a dedicated BILT-HI campus fundraising campaign—over a ten-year horizon. Together, these efforts highlight the distinctive strengths of health innovation at Illinois and position the university to advance as a national and global leader in this space.
As articulated by the task force, “This task force exists to position the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a national and global leader in health innovation by identifying, aligning, and activating the university’s unique interdisciplinary strengths, partnerships, and infrastructure across health-related domains.”
Health Research and Innovation Asset Data Management
Following a year-long process of planning, stakeholder input, and prioritization, the task force established a working group to develop a health research and innovation asset data management system. This system will align and integrate numerous unit-level and campus databases that contain information related to health research resources, including faculty, projects, equipment, and facilities. The goal is to create a more accessible and searchable framework supporting discovery, reporting, and strategic planning across the campus. This work, led by Patty Jones, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, will continue through phased database migration and refinement.
Identification of Priority Themes and Strategic Planning
To guide future priorities, the task force surveyed units across campus to identify areas of health innovation in which they were most invested and where further development would have the greatest impact. Feedback from these units was circulated to additional campus stakeholders and to local healthcare and community partners. The resulting input was refined through a campus-wide strategic-doing workshop and supported by a strategic planning and operationalization process led by the independent firm IRISS. Together, these efforts led to the identification of five initial thematic areas for health innovation and corresponding project directions.
Five Initial Health Innovation Themes
- Innovating One Health Ecosystems for Sustainability
This theme advances integrated One Health approaches that connect climate change, soil health, crop science, animal health, and human health. A central focus is the microbiome and how inflammatory changes can link environmental conditions to chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart failure, and dementia. - Innovating Social and Rural Health Data Ecosystems for Impact
This theme focuses on creating an ecosystem-level data warehouse for social determinants of health and rural health to improve understanding of health disparities and enable predictive and preventive models using artificial intelligence. - Social Innovation and Technology for Healthy Lifespans
This theme addresses the development of the healthcare workforce of the future through innovative education, credentials, and technology-enabled training pathways, particularly for rural health. - Health Innovation Creating Lifespan Quality and Equity
This theme advances the Communiversity model, positioning the university as a long-term educational partner for communities from grade school through lifelong learning. - Health Innovations Fostering Community Wellness
This theme centers on the Illinois Community Wellness Toolbox, supporting communities in assessing, planning, implementing, and sustaining wellness initiatives tailored to local needs.
Integration into the HIRE Initiative
As development of the five themes progressed, significant cross-project connectivity emerged, including shared stakeholders, partnerships, and resources. To optimize coordination and implementation, the themes were unified into the Health Innovation and Rural Engagement (HIRE) Initiative, structured as a hub-and-spoke model to advance rural health innovation and access.
Conditions for Success and Expected Impact
For the HIRE Initiative to be successful, impactful, and sustainable, three conditions are essential. First, the initiative must establish strong campus, community, health system, industry, government, philanthropic, and global partnerships to ensure programmatic buy in and to support collaborative strategy development and scalability across Illinois, nationally, and globally. Second, HIRE must leverage existing campus assets and synergies to support pilot programming and preliminary data collection, including proof of concept studies and early validation of program metrics. Third, the initiative must secure sustained resources and investments to support growth, scalability, and meaningful impact at the state, national, and global levels through both existing and new partnerships.
Initial resources would include a foundational campus investment to launch HIRE, followed by stakeholder engagement and targeted fundraising to support long term sustainability. These resources will be used to meet operational timelines, achieve performance benchmarks, and deliver measurable community impact and return on investment. Performance will be assessed using both traditional academic indicators—such as research, scholarship, and education—and broader metrics, including community and population impact, technology development and commercialization, and follow on funding and partnerships.
With a dedicated hub for rural health innovation, the HIRE Initiative is expected to generate substantial returns for communities, the university, and the state of Illinois, while also strengthening Illinois’ competitiveness for national and global funding and partnerships. A centralized hub will enhance engagement with community partners as well as state and federal agencies and position Illinois to successfully pursue emerging funding opportunities, including new federal programs focused on rural health and improved clinical outcomes.
A fully funded HIRE hub would enable immediate progress in Years 1–2 across three lead program areas. The first focuses on rural community ecosystem engagement, bringing together university partners, colleges, and units to use advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence to improve understanding of rural health conditions across the full ecosystem. This work will support stronger predictive disease models and expand educational programming that connects rural communities with healthcare systems and local, state, and federal resources. The second program emphasizes development of the rural health workforce, using innovative education and training models—infused with artificial intelligence and advanced skill development—to grow and upskill the workforce of tomorrow and expand job opportunities in central Illinois, statewide, and nationally. The third program advances a “Communiversity” model, establishing a sustained partnership between communities and the university that promotes lifelong learning, adult skill development, and rural innovation and business development, strengthening local economies and long term health and wellness.
Together, these three program areas leverage existing campus strengths alongside new data driven and educational approaches to deliver near term impact while building scalable infrastructure to support underserved communities across Illinois. These programs also represent the most intensive interdisciplinary and cross sector collaboration among campus units and stakeholders. Strategic investment in these areas over a three year period will position the HIRE Initiative to attract extramural, community, industry, and governmental support, enabling long term growth and sustainability of the hub.
Collectively, these efforts in rural health innovation will accelerate the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign’s role as a global leader and hub for equitable, collaborative, and transformative health innovation and education, improving health outcomes, strengthening rural economies, and enhancing quality of life across Illinois and beyond.